"A Trinitarian Testimony" Matthew 3:16-17 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Turn your attention now to Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

This morning we'll be finishing Matthew 3 with verses 16 and 17.

In a couple weeks, we'll be back in Matthew 11, which picks up the John the Baptist narrative.

So we're we're gonna stick with John the Baptist so you can skip over Matthew 4 through 10, which I've been teaching the last few months anyway.

So this morning we finished Matthew 3.

Let me read the word for us, and we'll begin.

I'm gonna read beginning in verse 13, even though this morning we're just looking at verses 16 and 17.

This is the word of God.

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you.

Do you come to me?

But Jesus answered him, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

Then he consented.

This is the passage we looked at last week, and now for this week, verse 16.

When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.

Behold, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

Pray that God seals his word on your heart.

There is often a theological debate.

If you've been a Christian longer than a few years, I'm sure you've been exposed to it.

Do you best learn about God by studying his words or his actions?

And you might hear that debate framed differently.

Do you learn about God through the truth of his word or by the lives of his followers?

It is as if pitting doctrine against action and then deciding which one is better to reveal truth or better to measure what true religion is.

Doctrine or action, words or deeds.

What I love about this last few passage here in Matthew 3, these last two verses, is that you see the words of God, God revealing himself with words that are matched with actions.

Divine words accompanied by divine actions.

The only way you can learn about God is through what he does in the world, but only if his actions are accompanied by words.

Otherwise, everybody would be left to interpret his actions for themselves.

If God just used words, his words would be would be error, they would be meaningless.

But God uses words to point to his actions, he uses his actions to reveal himself, and he uses his words to describe his revelation, to describe who he is.

So the words and actions of God cannot be severed.

And that is on full display here at the end of Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

In other words, doctrine and truth, love and truth, they're all condensed together.

It's hand in glove.

At the end of Matthew 3, as I mentioned, you hear the voice of God from heaven reveal who he is, and you see the actions of God on earth, Jesus Christ being baptized to fulfill all righteousness.

Theologians regard these two verses here as the most significant Trinitarian text in all of the Bible.

Of course, the Bible is in the background, or the Trinity is in the background of the Old Testament, but here at the beginning of the New Testament, the Trinity breaks through the screen, so to speak.

In the Old Testament, the Trinity is an undercurrent.

There's a Trinitarian undercurrent in the Old Testament.

You have to develop it from different passages, of course.

You see the truth of there being only one God from Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

You see that God identifies somebody as his son and his own nature in Psalm 2.

You see that son reigning on the throne of God in Psalm 110.

You see that described as the Spirit of God in Isaiah, and God won't share his glory with another.

So the Trinity in the Old Testament is there, but you have to cobble it together from different passages.

It's very much an undercurrent.

But then you get to the New Testament, and Matthew being the first book of the New Testament.

In Matthew 3 is your first presentation of the man Jesus Christ, the adult man here, setting off into his ministry.

You see his first red letter words in the Bible here in Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

So Jesus is now in the foreground of the Bible, and the undercurrent of the Trinity in the Old Testament becomes a tidal wave here of truth in the New Testament, breaking through the waters of baptism right into the reader's face.

It hits you at 100 miles an hour.

You're just starting the New Testament, and right away you encountered this passage.

And I say it's often regarded as the most significant Trinitarian passage in the Bible because it is one of those rare passages where you have all three divine persons in the same place in the same time, but distinct from one another.

Here you have the voice of the Father from heaven, the Son of God on earth, and the Spirit of God descending like a dove.

Three divine persons distinct from each other, but in the same place, in the same time, and saying the same thing.

We're going to pick that up as our outline this morning, the Trinity revealed.

So I want to give you a crash course here in Trinitarian theology.

I know I have done this before.

We've talked about the Trinity many, many times before, but I was reminded by one of my soccer players this week when you say something so much you think you're repeating yourself is when one of us is starting to listen.

I was tremendously encouraged by that.

And I'm appropriating that for our time here this morning.

If it seems like I'm talking about the Trinity often, that's great.

I hope it starts to settle in on you.

It's important to understand the Trinity.

I'm going to pull the car over for our first few points this morning and kind of talk about Trinitarian theology before we get back to Matthew 3.

And this is important because understanding the language and the vocabulary of the Trinity helps you understand the narrative of the Bible.

I'm just the broad scope of the Bible.

The Old Testament has the focus on the Father speaking.

The Gospels have the Son on the cross, and then the epistles have the Spirit building the church.

You can understand the flow of the narrative of the Bible, how the Bible fits together as a book by understanding Trinitarian theology: Father, Son, and Spirit.

There's a progress to this.

By understanding Trinitarian theology, you have the kind of language in your mind to comprehend who God is as he reveals himself.

You can order your thoughts about God.

You can worship God in light of who God reveals himself to be.

But most important of all, and my main point this morning, is to try to help you unite your understanding of who God is to the gospel.

To help you understand that to know God as he is is to know the gospel.

As I mentioned, the Trinity is in the Old Testament, but it's in the background or it's the current under the water.

But in the New Testament, it breaks forward, comes to the waters of baptism, and confronts you right away.

When you see Jesus Christ being baptized to fulfill all righteousness, you immediately encounter the Trinity in verses 16 and 17.

So let me give you my full outline this morning.

I know I normally don't do this, we normally go a point at a time, but I want to give you all three points this morning so you know where we're headed.

The processions of the Trinity, the missions of the Trinity, and then the confession of the Trinity.

We'll spend most of our time on the first one.

We'll spend a little bit less time on the second one.

And by the third one, I'll get you to lunch before the stores close.

Processions.

We'll look at this one first.

This one first.

Processions is basically a definition of the Trinity.

Basically a definition of a Trinity.

That's what theologians mean by processions, how the persons of God relate to one another, how the Son proceeds from the Father, how the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Processions is just the fancy theological word to use for the definition of the Trinity.

Here's how I would define the Trinity that there is one God existing simultaneously, eternally, truly, and entirely in three distinct persons.

I see some of you writing this down, I see some of you with your phones out.

That's fine.

You're not going to be quizzed on this in the hallway.

It's not school.

So if you write this down to help you learn it, great.

If you learn just by listening, let this sit in your heart.

I won't ask to see your notes unless you're related to me.

One God existing simultaneously, eternally, truly, and entirely in three distinct persons.

And each of those words is helpful because there's lots of analogies about the Trinity that can break down at certain points.

I find the analogies helpful too, even though I know they all have a shortness to them.

The analogy of ice, how you know water can be ice and it can be liquid and it can be vapor, it can be all of those things, the same essence existing in three different ways.

That's a helpful illustration.

But those aren't simultaneous.

Water doesn't exist as ice and gas and liquid simultaneously.

And so that analogy breaks down.

The Trinity, you have God as Father, God as Son, God as Spirit simultaneously.

Eternally.

There's no start to this.

The Son has always been God.

The Spirit has always been God.

There's no start.

That's why it's eternally.

And then truly, each person of the Trinity is truly God, not just a representation of God, but truly God.

And entirely God.

Each person of God has the entirety of the divine essence.

It is not that the Father is more of God than the Son, or the Spirit is less of God than the Son.

All three persons are entirely, have the entirety of deity in them, even though they are distinct persons.

Now, at the core of this is a tension.

The tension is a basic mathematical problem.

The Trinity says that God is three and that God is one.

That's a tension.

Some might call it a contradiction, but as Christians, we recognize it's not a contradiction, it's a tension.

And it's attention wrapped up in the name, Trinity, try and unity.

It's wrapped up in the name.

God is three and God is one.

And it's critical to understand that God is three in some ways and one in some ways, but he is not three and one in the same ways.

Otherwise, this would be nonsense.

It would be contradictions to say God is three, and in the same ways he's three, he's also one.

That's contradictions and nonsense.

He's one in essence, he's one being, he's one in attributes, in will, in power, in authority.

That's all the oneness of God.

There's three persons that exist as that essence.

So he's three in personhood, one in essence, in other words.

Let's walk through those persons one at a time.

I think that'll make it helpful for you.

First, the Father.

And as I walk through these persons, I'm just using their names or their titles because those names and titles that defines them as they relate to each other.

That's what processions means.

The Father is called the Father in as much as he relates to the Son and the Spirit as Father.

That's what makes him Father.

He is the Father in the Trinity.

Father just means that he's the source, he's the fountain of divinity.

All of the divine essence comes from him.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

It's common for us to visualize God this way in our minds.

I won't ask you to confess to doing this, but it's a very common way to visualize God.

You have or to explain the Trinity in your mind.

I was going to draw like a drawing of this on the screen, and I give up on that.

Sometimes we think of God as the essence of God here, you know, in the cloud, so to speak, here's the oneness of God, the divine essence.

And then from that cloud, here's the Father.

From that cloud, here's the Son, and from that cloud, here's the Spirit.

It's a very common way people conceptualize God.

Here's God, the Father has God, the Son has God, the Spirit has God.

The problem with that is that there are, if you're counting at home, one, two, three, four things there, which is not Trinity.

There is not God and Father and Son and Spirit.

That would be four things.

That wouldn't be Trinity, that would be quadrantity.

Trinity, there are only three.

There is the Father.

The Father is the entirety of the divine essence.

It dwells in him.

There's no deity, there's no divine essence outside of the Father.

All of the divine essence resides in the Father.

It's who he is.

He is the fountain.

Everything comes from him.

This leads to the Son.

The Son is begotten.

The Son has his life from the Father.

This is what the word begotten means.

In the English language, we use the word, we use the phrase give birth for mothers.

Mothers give birth.

There used to be an English word for the father's role.

The father begat the son.

The life comes from the father.

And that's a biblical word and a biblical concept.

In fact, if you are older than me, you memorize John 3.16 that way, didn't you?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Now everybody older than me said begotten.

Everybody younger than me skipped that word and said son.

Because newer translations have dropped that word because they say it's old English and people don't use it anymore, and so it's it's gone, which makes me shed little Trinitarian tears every time.

It's a very helpful word.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

John 1 describes the Son as the only begotten Son as being from the Father's side.

Begotten just means to have life from someone else.

And Jesus says that, doesn't he?

He says, as the Father has life in himself, so the Son has life in him.

And the Father has granted the Son to have life in himself.

That's not talking about the Son's humanity.

That's talking about his Trinitarian self.

The Son has life from the Father.

All that the Father has, all the divine essence of the Father, he communicates, he gives to his son.

And the giving of that deity, the giving of that essence, the giving of that divine life is what it means to be the Son, to have life from the Father.

Of course, the word eternally is important.

There is no time that the Father decides to bring the Son into existence.

The Son has always existed, having his life from the Father.

If there ever was a moment when the Father didn't have the Son, the Father wouldn't be the Father.

The Father and the Son are both eternal.

Now there are other analogies for this that other than Father-Son.

Those are the two names that the Scripture uses, but there's other analogies, aren't there?

You think of a speaker who has a word in his mind.

You're like, I have a word for you.

It's not just one word.

You got a little speech in your mind.

If you tell someone, I got a word for you, you got a whole speech.

The Father has his own word.

His word is the entirety of who he is.

It takes us lots of words to say things because we don't use words well and meanings change and we're thinking through things.

The Father knows all things immediately and instantly.

The Father has a word in his mind.

That word is all of his thoughts.

It's all of his identity.

It's all of the divine essence.

And just like you, if you have a word in your mind, that word isn't you.

It's in your mind.

It's joined with you.

It's the same essence as you, but it's not you.

It's distinct from you in some way.

And so the Father has a word, and that word is the entirety of who he is.

And the Son is that word.

The Son is called the Word of God.

It's the entirety of the Father.

All of His thoughts, all of His essence, all of His attributes are His Word.

The Father is a speaker, the Son is the Word.

Just as a word reflects the will of the Speaker, the Son reflects the will of the Father.

Another biblical example, wisdom.

You have wisdom.

Your wisdom is all of your intelligence, all of your life skills, it's all of really your who you are.

Now, the problem with this analogy is that with us, not all of us is wisdom.

You know, we're foolish, there are parts of our life that aren't wise, we understand that, but not with God.

With God, everything He is, all of His attributes, all of His essence, the very nature of God itself is wisdom.

And yet your wisdom is distinct from you.

It's inside of you, but it's not you.

It's distinct from you in some way that we can't explain or understand.

And so the Father has all of the divine essence.

The divine essence is the Father.

But the Father has his own wisdom.

And again, the wisdom would be all the divine essence.

That's the Sun.

Or light, as light reveals the source, it's the energy of the source.

So the sun is the light of the Father illuminating the world.

Again, that analogy breaks down, doesn't it?

Because if the sun gave all of its essence at once in light, it would burn out and be gone.

If you turn on a flashlight and it gave all of its power in the form of light, it would be dead immediately.

But God, being eternally generative, eternally life-giving, has infinite energy and life in him.

All of who he is is illuminated as the sun.

A person's thoughts.

Your thoughts and you are the same thing.

You change your mind about things.

But not so God.

His thoughts are constant, and his thoughts are the entirety of who he is.

All of who he is are his thoughts.

If we lose track of our thoughts, God doesn't all of who he is or his thoughts.

And this is why the Son is the mind of God.

But the point is, with all of these examples, the second person, the Son, has his life and identity and existence from the Father, and it's the entirety of the Father's life and identity and existence.

You know, we have a self-image.

You have an image of yourself.

My self-image looks just like me, but if I'm gonna be honest, my self-image is a little bit taller, stronger, more ruggedly handsome than me.

It's a shame I know.

My self-image doesn't quite line up to the reality.

Also, my self-image isn't alive, it just exists in my head.

The father has an image of himself, but that image is perfect and complete and exactly representing God as he really is, not missing any part of God, identical to him in every way.

And that image is alive.

My image isn't alive, but the father's image is alive as a distinct person.

That's the son.

No.

The son and the father are identical.

He has the exact nature of his father.

Back in the pre-COVID world, when there were in-flight magazines, do you remember those in-flight magazines?

I've used this illustration before, so perhaps you remember this in-flight magazine.

Delta Airlines had a fascinating story in its in-flight magazine about parents of identical twins.

And it had asked these parents for tricks or life hacks on how you can tell your twins apart from each other.

Apparently, this is something that parents of identical twins have to deal with.

The most common way the story said was to write an initial on the heel of one of them with a Sharpie.

I know you laugh, but you don't have an identical twin, do you?

And I see the drawback to that is where you have to grab him by his heel and turn them upside down.

Oh, Fred.

Okay, there you go.

One parent dressed one kid in red socks and the other in green socks.

I don't know if they were Patrick and Nicholas or not, I don't know, but gave them names and then they could always tell by the color.

Another parent said he always put one child on the right side of all the pictures and the other on the left side of all the pictures.

But then tragedy struck several years later when they realized that many of their pictures, when they were developed, the negatives were reversed.

And so all of that effort for nothing.

I played high school soccer with two twins, Lucius and Colburn.

This is long before Harry Potter was a thing.

Lucius and Colburn, they were identical twins, but one had a freckle on his nose.

So you had to get really close to him.

Even as high school kids in soccer have to get close and look at these red-headed dudes and see.

Oh, he has a freckle, Lucius.

You looked at the father and the son, how could you tell them apart?

You can't.

They're identical in every way, except that one is the father and the other is the son.

One is the source and the other is begotten, which leads thirdly to the spirit.

The spirit proceeds from both the father and the son.

That's why he's called the Spirit.

Just as the Son is the Son because he has life.

The Spirit is called the Spirit because he comes from the Father and the Son.

And this is the best way I have to explain this.

I know all analogies fall short, so just track with me just to get the point of the analogy.

It falls short in some ways.

But if the father has a self-image of himself, and that image is alive and the entirety of the divine essence, now there's two things the Father, who has all the divine essence, and the Son, which is the exact image of his father, the radiance of his glory, the imprint of his nature, the fullness of deity, all of that.

The Father and the Son, there's two things now.

The Father and Son look at each other and they have some kind of response towards one another, some kind of love, affection, joy, delight, communion.

But in a perfect being, that's That response or that love, that joy, that delight, that affection, that communion would also be the entirety of the person.

There's no part of the father that is not filled with love, joy, delight, and affection towards his son.

We have mixed motives with people, but not the father.

The father's heart is filled when he looks at his son, it's filled with all of who he is directed at his son.

That's a third thing, then, isn't it?

Father, son, and the love they have for each other.

The son sees the father.

The son, as a as a person in the image of the father, with who's alive, sees the father and has his own love, joy, and affection, which again is all of the joy, all of the energy, all of the divine life reflected back to the Father.

So the Father and Son both mutually filled with love, joy, and affection for one another.

And that love, joy, and affection is the entirety of the divine essence.

That's Father, Son, Spirit.

That explains why the scripture refers to them as Father, Son, and Spirit.

The Father is the source, the Son is begotten, the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

It is not that only the Holy Spirit is Spirit, and the Father and Son have bodies.

It's not that only the Holy Spirit has love, joy, delight, or fellowship.

No, all three of them do.

That's the point.

They all have those things completely and fully, but they are distinct from one another.

One is the source, one is begotten, and one proceeds from the other two.

So this is the best way, I think, to explain the Trinity is those kind of concepts right there.

I know there's analogies, and I know pastors are supposed to hate on analogies.

Every analogy is heresy.

I know we're supposed to.

I like the analogies.

I like even the bad analogies because they all serve to make some kind of point.

You know, they fail in lots of ways.

Of course they fail in lots of ways.

You know, the analogy of the egg or the clover or the ice cube, they all fail.

But they are helpful just to communicate some aspect of the Trinity.

The bottom line is the Trinity is outside of understanding because it's outside of who we are.

We're all lots of people.

We all have the same nature as each other, but not the identical same nature.

We have different human natures.

The human nature is multiplied in each of us.

That's not true with God.

It's not that the Father has the divine nature, the Son has the same kind of nature, but a different one, and the Spirit is the same kind of nature, but a different one.

No, they have the same exact nature.

Just as Father, Son, and Spirit.

So I know I'm supposed to hate on analogies, but I have one that I really like.

Can I share it with you?

Please don't tell me all the ways it fails between service, because that would just make me sad.

The analogy of music.

Imagine the perfect composer.

He has the song in his mind, and he has it perfectly in his mind.

And he writes it on paper, gives the notes to the music.

And the perfect person plays the perfect song.

And the music fills the room.

The essence of the song in the composer's mind, the essence of the music on the page, the essence of the sound filling the room would be the identical essence.

There would be no distinction between what you hear and what you read and what you think.

They would all be the same exact thing if the musicians were perfect.

That's a helpful illustration for me, anyway, to think of how the divine essence can subsist as the Father, be given to the Son, the image of it, and then fill the room with joy and delight, the sound of it.

I know it falls short in some ways, but for me I find that helpful.

That's the processions of the Trinity.

That leads us to the missions of the Trinity.

Missions is what the Trinity does.

Processions is who the Trinity is.

Missions is what God does as Trinity.

That God is at work in the world.

Theologians refer to this as the missions of God, that God sets off to accomplish things in the world.

It's turning from who God is to how he acts in the world.

This is the missions of God.

Now, if you are tracking with processions, then you would deduce this: that there is a unity in divine action.

And what I mean by that is that everything God does, all of God does.

Everything the Father does, the Son does.

And everything the Father does, the Spirit does.

The eternity does not share a workload, so to speak, like the Father will work on Monday and the Son on Tuesday and the Spirit on Wednesday.

No, everything God does, all three persons do.

Because they have the same nature, the same will, the same design.

The same intentions.

When God acts, all three persons act.

So you can drill this into your head.

What are some things that God does?

God creates.

It's not just that the Father creates, the Father, Son, and Spirit create.

God saves.

It's not just that the Father saves, no, the Father, Son, and Spirit save.

God hears prayers.

It's not just the Holy Spirit that hears prayers, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit hear prayers.

God judges, not just the Father, the Father, Son, and Spirit all judge.

God exercises providential control over the universe.

Not just the Father, but the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Everything God does, all three persons of God do.

You can't distinguish between their actions.

They're united.

But there's a diversity in actors.

There are three different persons who act.

There are three different persons who act.

Now you know this instinctively, and I'll prove it to you.

If I say there are three creators, you would say that's not right.

And if I said there are three saviors, you would say, string them up.

If I said there are three creators, you would just you would say that sounds like polytheism.

But how about this?

If I said there's one creator but three who create, like, okay, I'm with you on that one.

That sounds okay.

There's one savior but three who save.

There's one sovereign but three who rule.

Like, okay, that sounds like Trinitarian theology to me.

I got that.

What I mean by that is there's unity in action, diversity in actors.

So take the analogy I said earlier, creator.

There's one creator, but through you create.

Well, how does the Bible describe the Trinity creating?

The Father speaks, the Son is the word through whom all things are created, and the Spirit hovers on the water.

That's Genesis 1, verse 2.

Genesis 1:2

Or saving.

The Father elects, the Son goes to the cross, the Spirit regenerates.

They're all at work.

Or prayer.

The Holy Spirit intercedes with your prayer requests, brings them to the Son, who is the mediator, who presents them before the Father, who hears them.

Or what about providence?

The Father decrees.

The Son sustains all things from Colossians 1.

The Spirit leads you according to the will of God.

All three persons of God are exercising providence.

They're all three ruling the world that way, but they're all doing so distinctly, which leads to this final observation.

They always work as trinity.

There's a unity in action, a diversity in actors, but always as trinity.

It's always one, two, three.

And it's not a random order.

The father speaking, it's not like it could have just as easily been the son speaking and the father be the word.

No, there's an order to it.

The father speaks because he's the source.

The son is the word because he's second.

He's the word, he's from the speaker.

The spirit hovers in joy and delight over creation, Genesis 1, 2 says.

Because that's the Spirit.

Your salvation.

The Father elects.

Why does it say the Father, the Son and Spirit also elect, but it's given to the Father because that's first.

The Father sends the Son.

The Son doesn't send the Father.

The Father sends the Son.

The Son goes incarnate to take on flesh.

The Spirit doesn't take on flesh.

That's not a very spiritual thing.

The Son takes on flesh.

The Son leads his life.

The Spirit convicts you of sin and righteousness in your heart changes your heart.

It's Father, Son, Spirit.

The Father decrees, the Son sustains.

The Spirit leads.

They're all acting in the same actions, but you see them always acting as Trinity.

With that as the background, we can jump back for our last few minutes together back to Matthew chapter 3 and look at confession, the third point.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Processions, missions, confession.

Processions is plural because the Son and Spirit both come from the Father.

Missions is plural because God does so many things in the world.

But confession is singular.

There's one confession of the Trinity.

And that confession is seen when Jesus comes out of the water of baptism.

Remember, the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, takes on a human nature, is born as a human being, leads a sinless life, goes to the Jordan River at year 30 of his life, is baptized to fulfill all righteousness, marking the capstone, the whole life of obedience.

He's now baptized to show that he's fulfilling the law from the inside out.

He comes up out of the water.

He's now going to be the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world.

He's going to spend three years, at least, fulfilling all the commands and all the descriptions in the New Testament of what he does to be the Savior.

His sinlessness has been established.

Now his Savior function will be established.

He's going to go to the cross.

And immediately when he comes out of the water, the heavens open up, it says in verse 16.

Immediately.

I've seen those that say, oh, he must have walked away away from the water from here.

The word immediately, that's a word that's all over Mark's gospel, but here Matthew uses it.

It's importance.

Immediately Jesus comes up from the water and the heavens are opened above him.

We have seen heavens opened before.

In Ezekiel chapter 1, one of the craziest chapters in the Bible, I write question marks in the column of my Bible next to things that it understands.

Ezekiel 1 · chapter mention

Ezekiel 1 just has one really long question mark next to it.

Ezekiel 1 starts with the heavens opened up, and then there's the description of all that Ezekiel saw trying to describe the unseeable God for us.

It's a crazy chapter.

That's when the heavens are opened up.

The heavens are opened up in the book of Acts when Stephen is martyred and he's going to go up and he sees Jesus at the right hand of the Father as the heavens opened up in heaven.

That's up there.

The heavens will open up in judgment in the book of Revelation, and the new Jerusalem will come down.

That's this kind of event.

Jesus comes out of the water, the heavens open, and the first thing that Jesus experiences, hears, observes when he comes out of the water of baptism is the voice from the Father in heaven saying, This is my beloved son.

Look at the words in verse 17.

This is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased.

Father loves the son with a special love because the son is the father's son.

He loves the son differently than he loves you and me.

There's lots of kids in my neighborhood.

Lots of them I like.

If I were to tell my kids, I want you to know I love the neighbor kids just like I love you because I'm so loving, they would not deduce from their, oh father, you are just like God.

You are omnibenevolent.

And my kids are exceptional, but I don't know if they would say that sentence.

They would probably be offended if I said, Hey, kids, I want you to know I love the neighbor kids just as much as I love you.

That would not be a sign of my my loving nature.

That would be off-putting.

The Father, his love is for his son.

And of course, the Spirit is the expression of that love.

It is an intra-trinitarian love.

That's what's going on here.

The Father declares, This is my beloved Son.

This person, Jesus Christ, coming up out of the waters of baptism.

This is the one that I love.

This is my eternal fatherly love, is set on this person right here.

The Father, when he speaks, is quoting Scripture.

He's quoting Psalm 2, verse 7.

Psalms 2:7

Psalm 2 is the famous passage.

It's the Psalm of David.

The nations rage, the people plot a vain thing, people are sinning and plotting to overthrow God.

And the one enthroned in heaven laughs and says, I'm putting my king on my holy hill.

I'm going to look at him and say, Behold, you are my son.

Today I have begotten you.

Establishing that the Messiah, the king who rules over the nations, will be the divine eternal son, the eternally begotten Son.

That, of course, connects to Psalm 110, where the Davidic Messiah is reigning like a priest from the throne of God itself.

That's the passage the voice from heaven quotes.

I love it when the Father quotes Scripture, especially when it's about Jesus.

This is also a reference to Isaiah chapter 42, one of the suffering servant songs.

Isaiah 42 · chapter mention

The suffering servant, if you remember from Isaiah, is the person who will come in human likeness, will bear the sins of many on his back, will be crushed by God to make atonement for sin, buried, and then resurrected.

That's the suffering servant.

It pleased the Lord to crush him.

But Isaiah 42, verse 1 is a reference here.

Isaiah 42:1

Behold, my servant, the Messiah in whom my soul delights.

Yahweh says that.

So the voice from heaven is taking Psalm 2, verse 7, Isaiah 42, verse 1, and bringing him together and marrying them and said, This is my beloved son in whom I delight.

Psalms 2:7 Isaiah 42:1

I love him, I take pleasure in him.

This is the suffering servant.

This is the one who will die.

This is the one who will be crushed.

This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

That's what John the Baptist declared at the baptism.

This is him.

Only this is not John the Baptist's confession.

This is the Father's confession from heaven, his voice parting the clouds.

This is for Jesus.

The crowd hears this, the crowd sees this, the John the Baptist hears this, John the Baptist sees this, but it is for Jesus.

Notice what it says in verse 16.

He went up from the water, behold, the heavens were opened to him.

Coming up out of the water, he is immediately met with the affirmation of God the Father and God the Spirit.

This is him.

The Spirit then descends upon him like a dove.

This is a visible manifestation, doesn't say the Holy Spirit was a dove, but descends on him in a visible form, not an incarnate form.

He doesn't have flesh, but in some kind of visible representation that alights on him like a dove.

I don't know why a dove not a crow.

They land kind of the same way.

But crows are not pretty animals.

I've never been to a wedding where they've released crows.

I now pronounce you husband and wife.

Doves are beautiful and peaceful.

A dove is what came back from the water after the flood to show you that God's wrath was abating.

That's a dove.

Maybe it's because in the Levitical law, a dove is the only bird that could be offered as a sacrifice.

The other birds couldn't.

I don't know if that's what's going on in the background here, or it's just as simple as Matthew trying to describe.

The Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus softly but visibly, alighting on him like some kind of bird, and I'm definitely not saying a crow.

But the Spirit gives testimony to the identity and the purpose of Jesus Christ.

So do you notice here that when the Father and the Son burst through, and the Spirit bursts through the curtains, it was an undercurrent in the Old Testament.

It comes through the water at baptism here.

When the Father, Son, and Spirit are in full display in Trinitarian form, it is about one thing identifying Jesus Christ as the Savior.

Which leads to this observation.

To know the Trinity is to know the gospel.

To know the Trinity is to know the gospel.

If you know the Trinity, you know the gospel.

The Father creates by speaking, the Son is the Word, the Spirit hovers.

You've seen the same thing play out here.

The Father is speaking, the Son is the Word, and the Spirit is hovering over the waters.

This is Genesis 1, again, in the new creation.

Behold, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.

The Father speaks, the Son is the Word, and the Spirit hovers his approval.

The Father sends, the Son goes, the Spirit regenerates.

That's the gospel.

Your prayer.

The Holy Spirit intercedes for you through the Son, who is the mediator.

The Son is the mediator.

That's the gospel.

The Father is the judge to pour out his wrath on the world.

The Son is the judge who will judge you according to the deeds done in the flesh.

The Spirit searches the secrets of your heart and will condemn you, except through the blood of Christ.

The Father elects those whom he will save.

The Son goes and dies for them.

The Spirit regenerates them.

That's the gospel.

Every Trinitarian action here is united to the gospel.

The flow of the Bible.

The Father is pointing you forward towards the Son.

The Son is incarnate.

The Spirit is building the church in light of the Son's resurrection.

Every Trinitarian action is about the gospel.

It's putting Jesus on full display.

It's not a coincidence that the curtain comes back and the Trinity takes center stage when Jesus comes up out of the waters of baptism.

It's showing you that God creates the world and directs the world to lead you towards faith in Christ.

Why is it important that the Spirit testifies of the Son's baptism?

The Spirit is the third witness.

The Spirit is the Spirit of truth.

It's not just the Father's voice.

It's the one from heaven who says, I know the Father, I know the Son.

Both of these boxes check out.

I got it.

It's when you pick up your kids from the nursery and your bracelet number has to match the bracelet number of the kid, and the nursery workers check in the two to make sure they're acting out here.

That's the Holy Spirit.

The name on the Father's bracelet, the name on the son's bracelet matches.

This checks out.

They're the same.

Which puts you in this position.

If you've never wrestled with this Trinitarian thought before, if you've never worked through your mind what it means, the Father, Son, and Spirit all working for the same purpose, the same reason, which is the gospel?

Ask yourself, if the Spirit is a spirit of truth, he's testifying to Jesus Christ as the Redeemer.

Are you going to argue against the Spirit of truth?

Or will you agree with the Spirit of truth?

Are you going to be opposed to Jesus Christ as a Lamb of God?

Are you going to submit your life to him as Jesus submitted himself to baptism?

Lord, we're grateful that your mission to earth as a Savior reveals the processions in heaven of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

We know that all that you do, you do for your own glory to put Christ on full display.

I pray for anyone here this morning that has never trusted you with their life, has never wrestled with the doctrine of the Trinity, perhaps.

I pray this morning that would bow the knee of their mind, the knee of their heart to the triune glory of Jesus Christ.

Affirmed from the Father, baptized in righteousness by John, sealed, ministered to by the Spirit.

You know, the very next verse of Spirit drives the Son into the wilderness to be tested by the devil.

He stands in our place.

He endured the devil in our place so that we can have forgiveness of sins.

I pray that every heart here this morning would believe that.

I give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.